Health officials stated on Saturday that China will continue to use its “dynamic-clearing” strategy to deal with COVID-19 cases as soon as they appear, adding that measures must be performed more accurately and take vulnerable people’s needs into account.
Despite the high transmissibility of COVID variants and asymptomatic carriers, the nation’s tight COVID containment strategy is still able to manage the virus, a representative from the China National Health Commission said at a news conference.
The zero-COVID strategy in China, which entails lockdowns, quarantines, and stringent testing, aims to stop the coronavirus from spreading.
Hu Xiang, a disease control officer, responded that China’s methods are “absolutely proper, as well as the most inexpensive and effective,” when asked if there would be a change in policy in the near future.
“We should uphold the idea of putting people and lives first, as well as the more general policy of avoiding both external imports and internal rebounds,” she stated.
The briefing came after a week in which markets soared in anticipation of China loosening its limits. On Friday, a former disease control official told a banking conference that China would adjust COVID policy “somewhat” in the upcoming months, adding fuel to the markets’ optimism.
The officials singled out Zhengzhou municipal officials in central Henan province for purposefully turning thousands of residents’ health codes red and the southwestern cities of Nanchong and Bijie for using illogical “one-size-fits-all” lockdowns.
Tuo Jia, another official in charge of illness control, said, “We put tremendous emphasis to these problems and are addressing them.